"What does it mean to fake your death, to wake up tainted?"
-Beck "Think I'm In Love"

Dropquotes are something I normally reserve for columns on my personal website, but I keep thinking of that song with the sordid Monti Te'o scandal, which I touched on to some degree here. You know TMZ is loving this since this is right in its wheelhouse: a sports story that transcends the world of sports, to the point where I ran national packages about it on back-to-back days in the morning TV newscast I produce last week and didn't blink twice doing it.

I really like that Deadspin broke the story while ESPN reportedly had it and sat on it. It showed the world that Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) is more than just a fantastic .gif capturer -- that initial article is very well-written and was clearly carefully researched. Many people who had never heard of Deadspin are now aware of the site as the result of it getting so much pub as the source in the initial reports when the story broke on Wednesday night.

Has this shifted the internet sports reporting paradigm? Maybe the next time ESPN decides to credit Sports By Brooks for a story it will continue to do so and not send out a strongly-worded email saying to instead credit sources. Or maybe not.

There's plenty of information to take in from the second-tier college all-star football games of the past week and a half, along with practices from the Senior Bowl, and trying to dissemenate that information and cut through spin and conjecture and find order within it all is part of the challenge. There are many moving parts in play.

An amusing thing I've read a couple of places is the perception that NC State QB Mike Glennon might be too tall, or at the very least above prototype height (6'5" being the typical ideal but 6'3" to 6'5" generally being acceptable). To me it's a case of splitting hairs -- if Glennon can throw the ball accurately, that's much more important than him being 6'6¾" versus an even 6'6".

One player who has been getting the megapush from scouts in Mobile in Central Michigan offensive tackle Eric Fisher, who had a fantastic 2012 season and has looked sharp under the close eyes of evaluators. Luke Joeckel is still the presumptive top offensive tackle prospect, but Fisher is beginning to make space between himself and the rest of the field below him. Taylor Lewan going back to Michigan for 2013 didn't hurt on that front.

Baltimore vs. San Francisco is an interesting Super Bowl matchup. Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh is the obvious big angle and adds a very unusual dynamic to the game. As it is, if you heard before the season that it would be Joe Flacco vs. Colin Kaepernick facing off in the Super Bowl, what would you have thought? With the Flacco situation the timing has been perfect for him, with Flacco slated to become an unrestricted free agent after the season. Baltimore was never going to just let him walk, but now it's considerably easier for Ozzie Newsome and company to justify giving him the huge contract that he's been angling for going back to the last off-season.